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Sealink shuts ferry route

26th September 1991
Page 16
Page 16, 26th September 1991 — Sealink shuts ferry route
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

• Sealink is to axe its Folkestone-Boulogne ferry route, bringing forward a long-term plan to shut the loss-making service. International operators will be forced to use already overcrowded Dover, where Customs officials have been given three months warning of a substantial increase in traffic.

Last year, 49,000 freight units used the Sealink Folkestone-Boulogne route, but the Dover Harbour Board believes that Folkestone's freight traffic can be "comfortably absorbed" by its existing capacity. No extra personnel will be brought in to help with Customs clearance.

Hauliers who need to go to Boulogne will have to use P&O European Ferries, which runs eight sailings a day out of Dover.

Nigel Gillman, managing director of Ashford-based Gillman European Transport, says the Folkestone closure is bad news: "We'll just have to take our chances at Dover now. We used Folkestone because we knew a driver could get on the 7:30hrs sailing and get a night's sleep. At Dover you can be hustling for a boat until 01:30hrs.

"A lot of our work is to Italy and the schedules are tight," he adds. "We need to know we are sailing and we need to know we can get on the right boat. We could do that at Folkestone and we stopped using Dover because we had problems there."

Sealink decided to drop the Folkestone service in a bid to recoup major losses last year, just 18 months after it was bought for £259m by Stena Line chairman Dan Sten Olsson.

At the time many analysts said that Olsson had paid too much and would have to rationalise Sealink to make any money.

Folkestone, and the hauliers who relied on it, appear to be the victims, along with up to 1,500 Sealink employees who face redundancy.

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Locations: Ashford

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